Uh oh... MacBook Pro (2011) issues

[lofi]

Hey guys,

Ok, so things are not looking too great for my early 2011 MacBook Pro. I was hoping to relay the issues here to see if anyone has come across anything similar.

So I was playing Dota 2 and the screen stopped responding to all inputs. Thinking that the Dota/Steam client had crashed I forced a hard reboot of the system.

It reboots but the screen is very dim...

I figured that this in itself probably did not point to the solid state drive but pulled it out and checked it against another system just in case, everything appears fine.

The present boot sequence:

I hit power on. The dimly lit screen fires up and the Apple logo appears with the egg timer below which appears to stall for a couple of seconds. The screen then flashes up to full brightness for the briefest of seconds before turning black. The keyboard remains lit but there are no signs of life on the screen.

I'm guessing the AMD graphics card is completely shot...

Has anyone come across anything similar before?

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can provide.

 

[Weaselboy]

Definitely sounds like the GPU is shot. It is part of the logic board, so a complete logic board replacement is the fix (and not cheap).

 

[lofi]

Definitely sounds like the GPU is shot. It is part of the logic board, so a complete logic board replacement is the fix (and not cheap).

Yip, thinking I may heatgun reflow it as I have done these before. Failing that it'll be sold for spares.

 

[yjchua95]

Hey guys,

Ok, so things are not looking too great for my early 2011 MacBook Pro. I was hoping to relay the issues here to see if anyone has come across anything similar.

So I was playing Dota 2 and the screen stopped responding to all inputs. Thinking that the Dota/Steam client had crashed I forced a hard reboot of the system.

It reboots but the screen is very dim...

I figured that this in itself probably did not point to the solid state drive but pulled it out and checked it against another system just in case, everything appears fine.

The present boot sequence:

I hit power on. The dimly lit screen fires up and the Apple logo appears with the egg timer below which appears to stall for a couple of seconds. The screen then flashes up to full brightness for the briefest of seconds before turning black. The keyboard remains lit but there are no signs of life on the screen.

I'm guessing the AMD graphics card is completely shot...

Has anyone come across anything similar before?

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can provide.

The 2011 MBP GPU failure strikes again. There's a thread that's almost 160 pages long in Apple's support forums.

There's been a helluva lot of 15"/17" 2011 MBP users complaining about GPU failure in their Macs.

 

[Mark-Technology]

I'm curious, how has Apple reacted to such grand failures in the past?

I've heard of the Nvidia fiasco and am hoping for a completely free replacement of my Mac's components even if my Mac is not affected by this yet.

Is that too much to expect?

 

[simonsi]

I'm curious, how has Apple reacted to such grand failures in the past?

I've heard of the Nvidia fiasco and am hoping for a completely free replacement of my Mac's components even if my Mac is not affected by this yet.

Is that too much to expect?

IMHO yes.

Fix if it fails - yes, pre-emptive replacement with no failure - no (this isn't a vehicle safety recall...)

 

[yjchua95]

I'm curious, how has Apple reacted to such grand failures in the past?

I've heard of the Nvidia fiasco and am hoping for a completely free replacement of my Mac's components even if my Mac is not affected by this yet.

Is that too much to expect?

Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope that Apple will announce an extended repair program for the Sandy Bridge MBP (early and late 2011) GPUs, like they did for the Sandy Bridge 27" iMac.